Kere Dean Maihi

Kere Dean Maihi's story at Manurewa Rugby is measured in decades, not seasons. Over two hundred senior games in the black and white jersey, a place among the club's Centurions, Counties representative honours, Life Membership, and now the role of President. These are the markers of a life shaped by one club, in one place, over the long years that turn a player into a keeper of something larger than himself.

Manurewa Rugby, known to those who belong there as Rewa, was founded in 1921. The club sits at Mountfort Park in the town of Manurewa, the northernmost outpost of Counties Manukau rugby. It is a club that counts its history in generations, and Kere Maihi has become part of that count.

He played his rugby when the game asked for commitment week after week, year after year. Two hundred senior games is not a number that arrives quickly. It represents seasons when the body was willing and seasons when it was not, matches that mattered and matches played simply because the team needed someone to take the field. The Centurions list at Manurewa recognises those who have played over one hundred senior games for the club. Kere's name sits there with the notation of two hundred, a figure that speaks to durability and to choice, the choice to keep coming back.

His ability took him beyond club level. He represented Counties A, wearing the representative colours that mark a player's standing in the wider union. But representative honours, for all their significance, were an extension of what he had already committed to at Manurewa. The club remained the centre.

When the playing years ended, Kere did not leave. This is where his story diverges from the common pattern, the one where former players drift toward other commitments or other towns. He stayed, and his role changed. The club granted him Life Membership, a recognition reserved for those whose service has been both substantial and sustained. Life Membership is not ceremonial. It is the club's way of saying that someone has earned a permanent place in its structure, a voice in its decisions, a responsibility for its future.

Today, Kere serves as President of Manurewa Rugby. The role places him at the head of a club that fields teams across age groups and grades, that maintains Mountfort Park, that navigates the demands of modern club rugby while holding to the identity built over more than a century. The President's role is administrative, political, pastoral. It requires someone who knows the club's history because they lived it, who understands what the jersey means because they wore it, who can speak for Rewa because they never stopped belonging to it.

There is a particular kind of leadership that comes from staying. Kere Maihi did not arrive at the presidency through a career in rugby administration or through connections made elsewhere. He arrived because he played two hundred games, because he remained when the playing stopped, because the club he served became the club he now leads. His story is not about ambition that moved outward. It is about commitment that went deeper, year by year, until the man and the club became inseparable. At Manurewa, where the black and white has been worn since 1921, Kere Maihi's name is written into the long record of those who stayed.